Dancing for the Devil: Dr. Edith Eger on Surviving the Holocaust and Turning Trauma Into Purpose

Edith Eger was only 16 years old when the Nazis invaded Hungary during World War II. Her future was ripped from her when she and her family were imprisoned at Auschwitz concentration camp. Edith’s parents were sent to the gas chambers immediately – but Edith survived, forced to entertain Dr Mengele – known as the Angel of Death – until she survived the death march. For many years after, Edith struggled with her past, rife with horror and trauma. It was only after reading Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning that Edith stopped running from her trauma and faced it head on.

When we interviewed her, Dr. Edith Eger was a 93-year-old clinician, speaker and author who is so full of wisdom and light, we could’ve done ten episodes with her. She passed away on April 27th, 2026, but her light, her words, and her impact will live on forever.

You can buy Dr. Eger’s book, “The Gift,” from our Bookshop.org storefront or wherever you like to shop books.

 

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

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Hi.

Hi there.

Hi. Hi.

Hey, Nora.

I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Thanks For Asking, a call-in show about what matters to you.

Just remember, the more you suffer, the stronger you become. You’re a good survivor. You know, you carry good blood.

So your ancestors never gave up. We carry good blood, and we always find the light, no matter how dark it is.

I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Thanks For Asking. That was Edith Eger, who was born in Hungary in 1927. Edith was born into a family that was just supremely talented.

Her sister Magda played piano. Her sister Clara was a violin prodigy. And Edith did ballet.

I had a very wonderful ballet master, and my mother took me to a ballet school, and he said to me that God made us in such a wonderful way that all the ecstasy has to come from inside out.

I didn’t know ecstasy or anything what he was talking about.

Of course she didn’t. She was a teenager and her teacher was talking to her about ecstasy coming from inside out. Edith wouldn’t know until 1944, when the Nazis invaded Hungary.

Clara was hidden by a violin teacher. But Edith, Magda, and their parents were sent to Auschwitz. The first night, their parents were sent to the gas chambers.

And Dr. Mengele, known as the Angel of Death, scoured the barracks looking for talented prisoners who could entertain him. And Edith, the dancer, was picked.

And forced to dance for the man who had just killed her parents. She was 16 years old.

The first night when I was pushed before Dr. Mengele had to dance, that’s when I remembered my ballet master, and it was an opening of a discovery for me to look at life from inside out.

And today I know the more you depend on someone else to make you happy, when you’re too externally dependent, something is going to bring you depression, that I hope you love yourself.

And so that was the first night when I began to really realize that nothing is coming from the outside. But when Dr. Mengele gave me a piece of bread, and instead of gobbling it up, I shared it with the girls.

And then that really saved my life. When I was in a death march, and the girls carried me so I wouldn’t die. Auschwitz was an opportunity.

I call everything an opportunity in life for us to discover, not recover, but to discover the strength that we are born with the joy and the love and the passion and purpose in life.

In 1945, as her camp was being liberated, an American soldier saw Edith’s hand moving just slightly under a pile of dead bodies. From there, Edith went to Czechoslovakia, where she met her husband, Bela.

You know, people ask me, did you love Bela? And I said, love? I was very skinny.

I was very, very hungry. And most of all, I was very lonely. And I met this guy who was hiding in the Czechoslovakian mountains.

And I was thinking that maybe I like to get to know him. And he ended up getting me Hungarian salami. So I tell people, what do you mean love?

They got married.

They had a daughter. They moved to the United States, where Edith got a job at a factory cutting the extra strings off little boy’s underpants for six cents a dozen.

She tried to keep to herself, to hide her experiences so people wouldn’t define her by it. She tried not to talk so people wouldn’t hear her accent. And when she got to the US, she saw some things were different, and some things were not.

There’s one thing I can tell you never assume.

In Hungary, if you had red hair, you were Jewish. We called them the Red Jews. Okay?

It wasn’t very complimentary either. So next to me was working in a factory, a girl with red hair. And I assumed, and she shook me, my whole body and said, I’m not a goddamn Jew, I’m Irish.

And so I learned not to assume. And the other thing was very difficult for me after Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. When I went to the bathroom, one of them said colored in 1949.

And so, you know, people tell me a lot of the times, I believe, I believe, I believe. And I’m saying that, you know, I’m really not that interested what you believe.

I want to know what kind of life you lead, because love is not what you feel, it’s what you do.

So, I joined the NAACP, I marched with Mark Lutert King, you know, and today, as you know, I’m very, very, very committed to do everything in my power to see to it that will never happen again.

But I have experience when good people do very bad things.

Edith and Bela have two more children, a boy and a girl, and the family moves to El Paso, Texas, where Edith goes to college to pursue a degree in psychology.

It’s in college, in a psychology class, that someone hands her a copy of Man’s Search for Meaning by another Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl.

Man’s Search for Meaning is one of those life-changing books that you’re assigned in high school or college, at least for me it was. It’s a book I’ve read during every big turning point in my life. It always gives me something new.

Frankl famously wrote, everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

I first read those words as a depressed, anorexic, bulimic college girl, but Edith reads them as a mother and a Holocaust survivor.

Her first reaction to getting this book, being handed it, being told, you should read this is, why would I want to read this? I lived it. But his words resonate.

That was really a wonderful opportunity for me to acknowledge that I ran away from my past.

I came to America penniless. I didn’t speak a word of English and I just wanted to be like you. I wanted to speak English without an accent.

And when I read that book, I realized that I have been like an imposter running away from my past. And I actually discovered that when I began to work with Vietnam veterans and then realized that I couldn’t take them further than I have gone myself.

When I read Viktor Frankl’s book, I was equipped with the verbal capacity because I didn’t want to tell you where I was because I didn’t want you to feel sorry for me.

So today my daughter calls it edhism, that the opposite of depression is expression. You know, what comes out of your body doesn’t make you ill. What stays in there does.

So you’re very good at asking people, don’t ask how are you, because people will say fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. Even if they’re suicidal. I did that with my patients and then I realized that’s a stupid question.

The next time I saw them, I said, jeez, good to see you. I miss you.

Edith realizes that her own healing is critical to her ability to heal others, but there’s more that she has to do. That includes leaving Bela.

Now, I married my husband. I either became his mother or his child. Then I decided that if I don’t get a divorce, I’m going to die.

They’re divorced for two years before Edith realizes that her unhappiness had nothing to do with Bela and everything to do with her own trauma and pain.

So I divorced my husband.

Today, I can tell you it had nothing to do with him at all. But I divorced my husband and people ask me, look at you, you went back to him. I said, no, I married him as a child.

The second time, I was a woman to a man. So I asked women especially, become financially and emotionally independent before you even think of marriage.

What happened in the time that you spent apart that allowed you and Bela to come back together as a woman and a man? What happened for each of you?

The thing is, statistically speaking, in America, there are six women per man. And I was alone. I was alone.

And I was alone even New Year’s Eve. And people told, You’re so pretty. You know, you dance so good.

I didn’t. I didn’t. I really didn’t.

And the people that I did go out with, I realized that it wasn’t my husband at all. Because I like kindness in a man. I like integrity in a man.

And he had that. It was just me thinking that there is more, that there is more. Sometimes we don’t know what more, just want more.

And I’m very happy for you that you’re able to acknowledge that the biggest gift that you can give to your husband who died, that you live a full life, that you carry that love and capable of give love.

And today you care more about giving love than getting love. And you have your calling now. You see, this is not your work.

This is not my work. This is our calling. That we survived for a reason that we can be good role models to children especially, because children don’t do what we say, they do what they see.

And the best thing for a child is a happy marriage. So are you going to have more children?

No, I got cut off. We have four. So my husband said that’s enough.

We’re already going to be parenting a child into our 50s. And I think that’s enough. When the kids are older, I want to maybe foster some teenagers out of the foster care system and do that.

But as far as having more children, I’ve been told we have enough. And even though our kids want, they want like 100 siblings. And also at some point, I feel like there’s just not enough mom for everybody.

No, I think it’s better to be a realist than an idealist.

Because when an idealist doesn’t get exactly what they’re looking for, they become very cynical, very sarcastic. They’re humor, it has a little knife in it.

I think it’s very important for you to listen to your husband, that good enough is good enough.

We’re going to take a quick break. 

We’re back with Dr. Edith Eger, who just told us the story of divorcing and remarrying her husband, Bela, which is really a story about grief and how we all process it differently.

After she remarries Bela, Edith’s work with veterans and with people with PTSD continues.

I was 40, my supervisor told me to go get a doctorate, and I said, it’s impossible, I’ll be 50. And he said, you’ll be 50 anyway. So don’t worry about the chronological age, please.

It’s your attitude, it’s the way you see yourself. And I keep getting younger and younger and younger and more alive.

And I’m so grateful to God that not only survived, but able to guide others from victimization to empowerment, from darkness to light.

You’re going to be 50 anyway. I love that so, so much. When we spoke, Edith was 93.

And she got that doctorate. She became a clinician and a speaker and an author of two books, The Gift and The Choice.

And she was talking to me, sitting in her sunny living room with cream carpeting, staring into my eyes on a computer screen, ready to take all of us from darkness to light, ready to share what is essentially an entire episode of just sparkling,

beautiful wisdom. How do you maintain even a level of compassion for people after what you’ve experienced? Because you mentioned in your book, you would look at these Nazi soldiers and think, God, I feel bad for you.

I think it’s very important to acknowledge that, first of all, we’re human beings, and as such, we’re going to make mistakes. One of the things I do ask sometimes, are you a perfectionist? And they tell me they are.

And I can guarantee you, if you are a perfectionist, you’re going to procrastinate. And so I really beg children in school, don’t allow anyone to define who you are. You’re beautiful because God only made one of you.

Maybe many people can do what you can do, but not the way you can do it. You’re unique, you’re one of a kind. So it’s good not to ask questions and not to give advice if you are in a relationship.

Don’t ask how are you and don’t say why don’t you, because that’s what parents do. Why don’t you cut your hair? Why don’t you do that?

And many times questions come across as interrogation. How are you? How do you think I am?

I truly think that your book is a beautiful parenting book, both for people who are currently raising children and people who need to do a little bit of reparenting for themselves.

How do you survive things and not get them all over your children?

I think one of the things I always ask people, if you want to say anything, ask yourself, is it necessary, is it very kind?

Because if it’s not kind, you’re going to say something like, you know, you’re a beautiful girl, but look at your pimples and let’s look at how fat you are. And you know that the yes but will cancel everything you said before the but.

So I like to tell people to say yes and. So when my sister and I were in Auschwitz, Magda was with me. Clara was saved by her Christian professor.

I never really want to really delete that there were many, many thousands, millions of people who were saving Jewish lives as well. But Magda and I were in Auschwitz. We were completely shaved.

And Magda, who is alive, and she is the pretty one in my family, she still calls me and tells me I’m gorgeous. So anyway, we were completely shaven, dead in our nakedness. And Magda asked me a question, how do I look?

Now, I like to bring the dead and them to the here and now. So instead of telling Magda how she looked with the bald head, you have a choice now as well what you’re going to pay attention to and concentrate on what you lost or what is still there.

So instead of telling her how she looked, and unfortunately, I wrote it in a book that she looked like a naked dog and I never should have said that because my sister wanted to kill me.

Anyway, instead of telling her how she really looked, I said, Magda, you have beautiful eyes. And I didn’t see it when you had your hair all over the place.

So it’s good to acknowledge that criticism will never ever bring someone to really say, thank you so much for telling me I’m really fat and I have a lot of people and I should do something. No, no. So no more yes, but yes, and yes, and yes.

And furthermore, I like to walk. And one of my idiom is, are you re-wowing or are you e-wowing? And that’s why I wear butterflies, because I like the idea of the metamorphosis, and then you shed the chrysalis.

What am I holding on to? And my definition of love is the ability to let go, not revenge. So with that, I’d like to tell you that it’s very important that we don’t grieve over what happened, but what didn’t happen.

When I had my little granddaughter with me and asked me to buy her a dress so she can go to her dance, and I’m a big sucker, I bought her a beautiful designer dress, and I came home, and all of a sudden, I see myself crying, and I didn’t know what am

I crying about? I just bought Lindsay a beautiful dress. And to tell you the truth, I didn’t cry because I bought Lindsay a beautiful dress so she can go to her dance. I cried because I never went to a dance.

So you see, we grieve over not what happened, but what didn’t happen.

One of the points that you made is that there’s not like a wrong way and a right way to grieve something or to process something. There was Bela’s way and there was your way.

Exactly, exactly. I think it’s very important. And that’s the work I do to revisit the places where you’ve been to relive that experience, but don’t get stuck in there.

You go through the valley of the shadow of death, but you don’t come there or set up a house or that. So you have your memories, you cherish those memories, and you cherish what I cherish too, our cherished wound.

We have a special place in our heart. You don’t try to run away from it. You don’t try to forget it or overcome it.

You come to terms with it. There’s a difference.

And that takes time when you were saying that you were trying to work with veterans and you hadn’t healed enough within yourself.

Yeah. Grief is about going through the stages of grief. I studied with Elizabeth Kubler-Rose, the shock, the denial, the anger.

That some people get stuck in the anger. See, when you have anger, chances are you have a lot of other emotions underneath of anger. And the biggest one is fear.

Anger is not a primary emotion. And you may want to ask yourself, what am I afraid of? So, I can put it on the blackboard.

Anger, underneath, fear. And under there is loss. And the biggest fear of a child is the fear of abandonment.

And I tell you, women who approach midlife, 40s, 50s, there is one thing they’re really afraid of, to being with themselves. And if you’re not happy alone, you won’t be happy with anybody else. If someone says, I need you, run.

Needs are things without which we cannot survive. I need to breathe. After four minutes, I’m done.

That’s very important. The grieving, feeling and healing. You cannot heal what you don’t feel.

Crying is good. What comes out of your body doesn’t make you ill. What stays in there does.

So share your secrets.

In the US, we’re a very grief-averse culture. Like you mentioned that if you tell people what you went through, that all they will give you is pity, and pity is useless.

Yeah. What is important is that if you get married, I tell you everything and you tell me everything, then we’re going to have a good marriage. It’s not true at all.

I don’t belong to you. I belong to me. You know, don’t ask, well, who did you sleep with before you married me?

No. No. A question many times is really, you think you are on a witness stand, you know, just be Jewish.

Answer the question with a question. How are you? Well, how do you think I am?

And don’t ask why questions, because why is a past-oriented word and a problem-oriented word. I like people to get rid of two things. One is in the past, guilt, and one is in the future, worry.

We never worry about good things happening. Worry is the most neurotic emotion. I worry about you, that’s not good.

That means you’re stupid, I’m smart, and I know what’s good for you. It’s really not. Just say sounds like, and then put in a feeling word.

Men like to understand things. That’s why we call men thick-headed. They want to understand everything.

We women feel the feeling. Sounds like you said about that. Glad about that.

So I usually take a man from here to the heart. Because when men cry, it’s not manly. In America, in Anglo-Saxon culture, the biggest word in Anglo-Saxon culture is control yourself.

You’re so controlled, you’re splitting at the seams. And somebody tells you, that’s okay, you’re strong, you can handle it. We’re human.

And it takes courage to be average.

Tell me more about that. I love that phrase.

Yeah, really. We can be very, very unkind to ourselves. Yeah.

My precious right-hand person, you see her, Katie Girl. And Katie Girl was born in Germany. And you know, in the schools when I went to, was based on that German philosophy.

When the teacher comes in, everybody gets up in unison. And you know what? We had to practice it.

One, two, three, and then one, two, three, up, down, up, down. No wonder Hitler could do what he did. Blind adherence to authority.

And I think there is a Hitler in every one of us. And we have dictators. So question authority rather than blindly adhere to authority.

I sometimes refer to Akhmet Dijedat when I heard him say that there was no Holocaust. So when someone is telling you such a statement, don’t deny their truth. Just say thank you for your opinion.

See, it’s very important when someone throws out the rope, don’t pick it up. It takes two to fight. It takes one to stop it.

And hopefully people can express their opinion. I think the answer is to that man is to go to a German consulate because they will tell you that. The German people did fess up.

The largest Jewish population today in Europe is in Germany. I think not to really throw out things that really is not questioned. Question authority rather than blindly adhering to authority.

And that’s what Plato said. You have to think of a lie and has to be a big one and then repeat it, repeat it until people believe it. So our biggest enemy is ignorance.

Tell me about hope.

Ah, well, that’s my favorite wonderful four-letter beautiful word.

How do you find hope in hopelessness? I usually talk about Hans Selye, who got the Nobel Prize in a stress study. And he says anything stressful that come to us, we either fight or flee.

But in Auschwitz, it didn’t work, because if you touch the guards, you were shot right away. If you try to flee and touch the barbed wires, you were electrocuted. So you have to learn how to cope and find hope in that hopelessness.

And I remember that with God’s help, I was able to turn hatred into pity. I felt very sorry for the guards, that they were brainwashed, that they told me I’m cancer to society, and the only way I will get out of here is as a corpse.

And what is happening now that happened there, is that we never knew what’s going to happen next. Four o’clock in the morning, we stood in a pair. They were counting hands.

We don’t know whether we’re going to end up in a gas chamber. When we took a shower, we didn’t know whether gas or water is going to come out. So I think this is where we are now.

It’s a difficult place to be in a limbo. We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. There is no guarantee in life.

Look at your birth certificate. There is no certainty. There is hope.

There is probability that if I turn hatred into pity, then I will give myself a gift because while I’m angry, I’m hurting me. If you’re not happy with yourself, you will never be happy with anybody else.

So everything comes from a nice Jewish boy called Jesus. He was a nice Jewish boy and turned out to be a prophet who told us, love thy neighbor as thyself.

That’s hard to do if you don’t love yourself.

It is okay to get up in the morning and say, I love me. It’s okay. Give yourself and add a girl, add a girl, add a girl.

So carry me on your shoulder, carry me on your shoulder and you’ll never give up, ever give up. It’s temporary. This is temporary and we can survive it.

Everything is temporary.

One of my friends just had her engagement broken off. Her fiance just left, said, this is not for me and I sent her part of your book today. I highlighted it and sent it to her and said, this made me think of you.

It was the part, I’ll tell you exactly what I said to her. It’s the part where you say, rejection is a word we make up to express the feeling we have when we don’t get what we want. Who said everyone should love us?

Exactly.

So sent him some white light and pray for him. If it’s okay because maybe you’re being protected, later on it’s much harder. No one rejects you but you.

You just wanted something and you didn’t get it. So give up the drama. No one can reject me but me.

Nobody can reject me but me.

It takes courage to be average. I wrote those things down, I think you should too. And we’ll be right back.

We’re back. Tell me about the importance of rage, because I highlighted that whole part too.

Yes, yes. When you are in a car, scream, cry, and then laugh like a hyena and you’re going to feel better. What comes out of your body, you got to have rage.

There is no forgiveness without rage. You can’t quote me on that. You got to shake your fist.

I think God allows us to be angry. But how long you’re going to hold on to it? Because if I’m still angry, I’m still a prisoner or a hostage of the past.

I refuse that. I want to have joy and passion. I don’t know if I can tell you on…

Can I talk about orgasms?

Oh, yeah, go for it.

Orgasm prevents Alzheimer’s. Have as many as you can because sex is between your ears, you know? So, what happens sometimes that married women, after a while, they don’t want to go to bed with him.

Because, you know, sex requires distance, and we put people in one bed. It’s another lecture.

But what is important that what women do sometimes, that they don’t want to do it, and they don’t want to do it, but then they do, because they think they should. They should.

And then they resent the fact that they did something what they didn’t want to do, so they can fluctuate from guilt to resentment. Not good. Not good.

You talked about resentment.

You also talked about the difference between rage and anger, and rage is this expression of anger. And if you don’t, it just spills out and hurts someone else.

Yes. You see, some people look at people in two ways. There is the victim who is weak, and there is the victimizer who is strong.

So part of the psyche will identify with the aggressor. We call it the Stockholm Syndrome. See?

So it’s very, very important. It’s okay to be angry. Don’t allow it to lead to resentment.

How do you know if you’ve crossed that line?

Your gut is going to talk to you.

Your gut is connected with your brain. Sometimes I tell people just to be like a little person and go into your body and say hello to all your organs. Say hi to the lung and hi to the heart and hi to the liver and so on.

Even in Auschwitz, it was important for us to care, and it’s important for us to use the word congruency. So check out what your head is telling you and check out what your body is telling you.

Tell me about self-love because I love that it came up so much in your book, just the need to love yourself and the expression of that love. And why do people immediately think that’s narcissism?

I feel like people don’t understand the word narcissism. And people are like, if you like yourself, you’re a narcissist.

That’s right. You know, I was invited to dinner. And they just came back from Germany, actually.

And mother introduced me to the children. This is my shy one. This is my giggly one.

This is my son, the doctor and so on. And we sat down to dinner. I was painfully shy.

I was cross-eyed. My sisters blindfolded me when they took me for a walk. So anyway, I looked at the girl next to me, the shy one, and I said, you have such beautiful profile.

And the mother kicked me under the table and said, don’t tell her that. She’s going to be conceited, you see? So now I know in this family, they don’t tell you what is good.

So you see, children learn how to get attention and bad attention is better than no attention. Bad breath is better than no breath. And by the way, if you read the literature on narcissism, narcissistic people don’t like themselves.

Let’s begin there. Self-love is… And when Jesus said, turn the other cheek, I think that’s very important.

That doesn’t mean that you go back and do the same thing over and over again. That’s what Einstein said. That’s the definition of insanity.

But I think what we say here as a survivor, look at the same thing from a different perspective.

If you look at Auschwitz as an opportunity, you actually realize that the more you feel that feeling, and not to run from that feeling, and acknowledge that that surviving has to do with going through the rage, but then you decide how long you’re

going to hold on to that, because while you’re raging, after a while, you can get addicted to anger. And I know people who are chronically angry, and nothing blocks intimacy more than low-level chronic anger.

So I teach men not to sexualize emotionality. Sometimes I work very hard for the past 40 years with the military. And the lower the rank, the more men comes home, and he’s angry all the time.

He’s mad as hell, not realizing that there is another way. So I think that’s why it’s very good to ask yourself, is this the best I can do? Because anything you practice, you become better at it.

So I hope people get rid of guilt and say if I knew then, I could have done things differently. My parents had tickets to go to America, and they didn’t. Every behavior has a consequence, not punishment.

Very important, you know, to think about your thinking and have a goal, and then see what you are focusing on, because whatever you focus on, you’re going to reinforce that behavior.

So you’re facing a decision, what are you holding on to, and what are you willing to let go of? And that’s my definition of love. The ability to let go.

And say one beautiful English word, next, keep going, keep walking, not rewaving but evolving. But it is very good to just be simple, what am I doing now? Is it working?

You know, just don’t have to complicate things. Don’t make the simple into the complicated.

Oh, we love complicated things though. We love to pretend like there’s going to be this huge system that will change everything.

Yeah, when I’m hungry, I eat. When I’m thirsty, I drink. That’s life.

That’s the miracle of life. Just make it simple.

In your book, I loved knowing you got your doctorate when you were 50. I love that, especially in the US. We tend to think, wow, the expiration date for a woman is about 35.

So…

Yes, you know, I’m 93, young, but I’m not young and foolish. I think young. But I ask myself, you know, am I going to have five minutes of pleasure?

And then, who knows? It may not be good for my lungs because I have a lung issue. I think it’s very important to be a good mommy to you.

So you got to kind of be a kind, good, loving mom to you. We carry things from generation to generation, but you know, you can stop it. Just because your parents are drinking doesn’t mean you have to.

You can stop it from going from generation to generation. So don’t blame, because what you blame, you’re still a child. I don’t care how old you are.

What has aging taught you?

Patience, hope, and most of all, unconditional love.

Yes, and person, I am not a yes-but person. And I think that we are as young as we feel. I can still do the high kick.

I just did it yesterday or day before, and it’s not as good as it used to be. So accept the fact that it’s okay. It’s okay to be average.

It’s okay. I think we have goodness and kindness within us. And whatever you practice, you’re gonna become better at it.

So practice hopefully self-love, which is self-care, which is not narcissistic. The only one you’re gonna have for a lifetime is you. All other relationships will end.

So there are two questions, and I’m sure you have that already there. One is when did your childhood end?

I think it’s very important that some of us didn’t have any childhood, that we had to become little adults to take care of sick parents, to be really taking good inventory when did your childhood end?

And the second question, you know, would you like to be married to you? And I think you are probably able to sort things out, and when you’re there with your loving husband, you’re 100% there, not to divide yourself, but to be 100%.

It’s very good to differentiate the being from the doing. Your being is good, that doesn’t make junk. Your doing, we’re talking about your behavior.

In America, we say, I failed at such and such, but that doesn’t make you a failure. You see the difference? It’s a big, big difference.

I am a human being.

I just wrote that down for my wall.

I’m not better than or less than. I’m not super mention, un dimension, they say in German.

I really wish I could talk to you for a hundred years. Honestly, I can’t get enough of you. You’re so wonderful.

I love you so much, Annie.

You’re so wonderful.

I honestly, I know you have another interview, but you’re just so wonderful. Thank you. Thank you.

You are, you are the gift. So thank you. I appreciate you.

You’re a wonderful, brilliant interviewer.

Keep on, keep on. You’re a woman of strength.

Thank you. Bye. Thank you so much, Dr.

Eger. Thank you, Dr. Eger.

Edith Eger died in 2026 at the age of 98, and I will treasure this conversation and this time with her for all of my days. I think often of the advice and wisdom that she shared in this interview.

It is okay to be angry, but don’t let it fester into resentment. You’re still young, even at 93. Dr.

Eger got her doctorate at age 50, so go do the thing you want to do. You’re going to be 50, whether or not you do the thing that you want to do. As she put it, you’re going to be 50 anyway.

It takes courage to be average. I want that tattooed somewhere on my body and I’ve got the space. There’s no forgiveness without rage.

She also called grief our cherished wound. You don’t try to run away from it. You don’t try to forget it or overcome it.

You come to terms with it, there’s a difference. Dr. Eger is the author of two beautiful books, The Gift and The Choice.

I highly recommend both of them. I’m Nora McInerny, this is Thanks For Asking. I am a podcaster, I’m also an author.

I’ve written several funny books about sad things, including It’s Okay to Laugh, Crying is Cool Too, The Hot Young Widows Club, No Happy Endings, and Bad Vibes Only. Thank you for being here.

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